There are particular times I wish I could nuke this blog from a comfortable chair in orbit somewhere, particularly various points in the heavens I saw this weekend. Seeing stars is an experience I haven’t been accustomed to since what some would call simpler days. There are fragments of those days that seem generally less than complex and they bleed into even more basic ideas like sleep and dreams. It always makes you wonder somehow, looking at the stars, if all those things can actually be attained.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t be moved by Aguirre, the wrath of god. Herzog to me has become something of a curio in the most Lynchian of aspects. Something that has penetrated popular culture so effectively that it is mere commonplace. It seems like coffee table science at some point.

You lift your voice in those elevated tones and you talk about Werner. Then you follow it with a nonchalant expression of a somewhat obscure film title. And then you wave your hands through the smoky air, slicing up the delicate space between you and whatever your selected audience is. You weave whatever magic or charlatanism there is to be wielded. And you sashay through its embers.

I totally promised. Really I did. But its impossible. Aguirre is one of these works that wants to dissuade you right off the bat. The long, almost plodding shot of indian slaves and their masters marching down in the valley to their doom is laborious. But something starts to dawn on you. The viciousness sets in. And one by one, people are maimed and punished for following their dreams, ethics, or lack of both. True enough these very same people are savage enough to deserve such a thing. But we even see the black slave succumb to the same trappings as his masters, all under the guise of freedom at the end of the rainbow.

Its even in the subtext of the indians who are continually taunted and asked if they will run away if their chains are broken. The recurring theme of the indian slave piper performing culminates in a fucking masterstroke; a still shot of a pleased look and a purpose served.

I stared at the stars and for one second and I saw hope. I almost lost it up there in the fever of a river of noise. The world rotates around me and I can smell the air. Memories of grass interconnect with summer breezes. And for that second, the mirage stares down at me from the heavens; the conquistadors vision of the boat in the tree. The promise that if you go on down this river, that one day it will coalesce. That you can and will make sense of it all and it will draw you to some sort of singularity of purpose. You will conquer Mexico like Hernan Cortes and expand the glory of the empire. You will bend the invisible forces at hand.

You will end up like Kinski, staring at the sun or any number of stars; oblivious, adrift and barely standing upright.

Like I said. I made a promise and I broke it.

But its been a long descent down that river. And maybe I don’t empathize with Aguirrie at all but I was along for the ride, much like the monk and the slave who both interpret the ‘dream’ as something else entirely. The slave upon seeing the arrow in his leg simply says “Its not a boat. Its not a tree. This is no arrow. We only see arrows because we are afraid…” Whereas the monk simply states “This arrow cannot hurt me… this is my dream.”

Aguirrie’s response; the arrows are real, much like his own dreams. Dreams that have led men to their death and sorrow. Who is to say? Who doesn’t want to look up into the stars and get lost in them? Who wants to connect the lush, manicured lawns of their youth with the possibility of a small plot of land to mow and to be buried under? Who wants to sail down the river of noise like some feedback driven river of styx to find the pot of gold at the end?

The conquistadors felt their mandate was to find el dorado, the lost city of gold. Some men killed for it and some men like Ursúa try to hold steadfast to their own ethics. And what happens to Ursúa? Shot in the chest, alive for awhile, then sent down the river in a canoe only to be hung while his wife would rather submit herself to a harsh fate of cannibals then her own countrymen who betrayed their moral compass.

Herzog, through the chaos of whatever hell he had to deal with in Kinski and the environs he had to film within, captures one thing. And that thing is the absurdity of the quest for meaning and purpose. Ironically, he follows his own chaos and flow to craft something cohesive and stammering upon watching for the first time.

You wonder in some ways who Werner empathizes the most with at the end of this mess; monkey ironically shitting in the clutches of Kinski as he stares at the sky and sun with promises of world domination. Or did this movie end when Ursúa refused to speak, hung to the hymn of a creepy backwoods spaniard. Sorry to spoil it for you.

You should know by now though; the best movies are the ones where everyone dies and/or follows their dreams…

Down the river of noise… staring at the suns in the blackest sky. Laughing, blindly at the inevitable.

After all that is no arrow…

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Works Every Time
• » The whole livery line

• BROWSE / IN kinski spoiler alert: everybody dies